A Great Teacher dies...

FILE - This March 9, 1988 file provided by Warner Bros., shows actor Edward James Olmos, left, comparing notes with high school teacher Jaime Escalante during the filming of the Warner Bros. film 'Stand And Deliver,' in Los Angeles. Escalante died Tuesday March 30, 2010 in Reno, Nev. He was 79.
(AP Photo/Warner Bros., (Warner Bros.)

LOS ANGELES – Jaime Escalante transformed a
tough East Los Angeles high school by motivating struggling
inner-city students to master advanced math, became one of America's
most famous teachers and inspired the movie "Stand and Deliver."

He died Tuesday at age 79 after battling cancer for several years,
family friend Keith Miller said. Escalante used his outsized
personality to goad his working-class, Mexican-American students to
succeed, said Elsa Bolado, 45, one of his former pupils.

Bolado, now an elementary school
teacher and trainer, remembers Escalante's charisma, the way he built
her confidence with long hours of solving problems and how he
inspired her career choice with his unorthodox approach to learning.

"Teaching is an art form. There's a lot of practicioners and
very few artists. He was a master artist," she said.

An immigrant from Bolivia, he
overhauled Garfield High School's math curriculum and pushed his
students to do their best until the school had more advanced
placement calculus students than all but four other public high
schools in the country.

Edward James Olmos played Escalante
in the 1988 film based on his story.

"Jaime exposed one of the most dangerous myths of our time —
that inner city students can't be expected to perform at the highest
levels," Olmos said. "Because of him, that destructive idea
has been shattered forever."

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Escalante "shared in my
belief that anything is possible in California."

"He put everything he had into becoming an inspirational
teacher whose passion, commitment and belief that all students can
achieve excellence set an example for us all," Schwarzenegger
said. "His talent, hard work and dedication in the classroom
changed the lives of countless students."

Escalante was a teacher in La Paz
before he emigrated to the U.S. He had to study English at night for
years to get his California
teaching credentials and return to the classroom.

At first he was discouraged by Garfield's "culture of low
expectations, gang activity and administrative apathy," Miller
said. Gradually his long hours in the classroom paid off and dozens
of his students passed the test year after year.

Bolado took the Aadvanced Placement calculus test in 1982, the
year that testing officials made some Garfield students retake it
because they were suspicious that so many of Escalante's students had
passed. She said 14 students were asked to take the test again months
later and all 12 who did passed.

"To this day, I still think of the example he set — the
study skills, how not to give up," said Bolado, 45. "I
revert back to that every time things get rough."

Escalante left Garfield in 1991, taught at schools in Sacramento
and retired to Bolivia in 2001.

The cast of "Stand and Deliver"
recently appealed for donations to help Escalante pay for his
alternative cancer treatments.